Parents came to Fair Go with concerns about confusing expiry and
manufacture dates on their children's Evenflo car seats bought from
Baby Factory. There is no legal requirement in New Zealand to
have expiry dates on child restraints, however, American company
Evenflo has a self-imposed standard which states their seats are
safe to use for six years from date of manufacture. Parents
noticed some of their car seats had had the original expiry and
manufacture dates re-stickered, scratched or melted off. Some
found contradicting dates and did not know which one to take notice
of.

Evenflo's New Zealand distributor, Warwick Edwards, says a major
order fell through in the United States so Evenflo was left with
loads of unsold seats in storage. About two thousand of those
were later brought into New Zealand, but by that time there was
only about two years left until those seats expired. To solve
that problem Warwick Edwards changed the dates with Evenflo's
permission. Warwick Edwards says that because the expiry
dates are not a legal requirement, he has no problem with what he
has done and would do it again.

The Baby Factory says they have confidence the baby seats are
safe for the next six years and they acted in good faith on the
basis that Evenflo had authorised Warwick Edwards to change the
labels. However, when challenged by Fair Go, they said they
would no longer accept any seats that have had altered dates.

Plunket's National Child Safety Advisor, Sue Campbell, says
having confusing expiry dates is highly unsatisfactory, and wants
to discourage companies from changing dates. However, she
does think the seats are still safe to use and parents should
continue to use them.

In summary, Fair Go thinks there is no point in having a
standard if you're not going to stick to it. We accept these
seats are probably safe to use, but consumers should have been
fully informed about the date changes at point of sale. If
you weren't, then we think you have every reason to take it back
and ask for a refund.

All not fine
Reporter: Kevin Milne

Rhett Brown of Northland fell from a building site, broke his
neck and is now a tetraplegic. The Labour Department (OSH) took
both his builder employer and the site contractor to court and they
were each fined $22,500 for not doing all possible to prevent such
an accident. The builder paid out immediately, but the contractor,
Apex Construction Ltd, went into liquidation due to "losing an OSH
claim they couldn't recover from." This meant Rhett didn't get his
$22,500 because it was the company not the directors who were
fined.

Rhett is paralysed from the top of the chest down, and has
subsequently been hospitalised with other ailments due to his
paralysis. The two former directors of Apex, Steven Austin, and
David Woolford, have never taken it on themselves to pay the fine
to Rhett. They have no legal obligation to do so but we think they
have a moral duty to pay out.

We contacted both directors and urged them to reconsider. But
both say they disagreed with the court's decision and feel no moral
obligation to pay out.

Given Rhett's condition, Fair Go finds that position hard to
stomach and wonders why, in cases like these, the court fines a
corporate entity, rather than the directors, responsible.

Vanishing car
Reporter: Phil Vine

For some people a car is more than a car. It's a dream of
something more. That description may well apply to Glenn Pukeroa.
He put his pride and joy, his 1971 Mach #1 Ford Mustang into a high
security storage centre in Auckland, only to find eight months
later it had disappeared. As he says "off the face of the
earth."

More perplexingly Glenn's been shown security camera footage of
the Mustang on a Tuesday at 7.30pm and then an hour and a half
later he claims it had gone. He's been offered some interesting
explanations such as the thieves moving so slowly they didn't set
off the motion sensitive cameras.

Worse than that it seems no-one's able to pay Glenn the money he
thinks it's worth: $35,000. Sadly he didn't take out his own
personal insurance and he expected the storage company would be
covered. Wrong. They only have public liability cover, so unless
it's the storage firm's fault, if they left the gate open for
instance, then no pay out. If the place had burnt down, the
insurance company says, then people would have to rely on their own
contents policies. An expensive lesson about taking out your own
insurance if you put anything in storage. Hopefully the owner looks
as if he'll come to the party and compensate Glenn out of his own
pocket.